Quotable Country – 05/04/14 Edition

May 4, 2014 by C.M. Wilcox

Click the bullet after each quote to visit the source.

You can’t make a livin’ doing bluegrass. I mean, I think a lot of people would just stop and just do that if you could make the same kind of money. You don’t want to give it up, but you know you’ve got to expand in order to really make a living at it. ●– – Dolly Parton to a gathering of bluegrass journalists. Her bluegrass-and-some-other-stuff album Blue Smoke comes out Tuesday, May 13.

When you’re in a country songwriting dynamic you can only do so much. You’re pigeonholed, and I hate that. You can’t do this, you can’t say that. When you get in a room with [T-Pain], you can say whatever you want. Pain brings out the creativity in me for sure, because there’s no boundaries. I cuss. You can’t say sh** or f*** in a country song, but you can damn sure say it in a rap song. I’m not promoting cussing by any means, but it’s sure nice to be able to talk like I actually talk. It’s a very free writing atmosphere. ●– – Dallas Davidson says being free to write in a hip-hop style (language and all) brings out the creativity in him, as evinced by all of his hybrid country-rap songs sounding virtually identical.

It can be a little bit of a scary thing too. People will just come up to our house and ring the doorbell or just wiggle the doorknob and see if it will open. They’ll just walk in and I’m like, ‘Dude, I am packing. You can’t be doing that, just walking into my house.’ ●– – Kellie Pickler on some fans being total weirdos.

For some people, the phrase “country music” can be a bad thing because they don’t know about it. They’ve been listening to one type of music. You know, it’s not what it used to be and that’s not a bad thing. Music is evolving, no matter the genre. So, I would say no matter whether it’s country music or pop or rap, there’s a lot of great music out there currently, so be open-minded and give it a chance. Crank our music up a little bit and it might blow your speakers out! ●– – Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley, who has evidently now been given a speaking role.

When we initially got [back] together, everyone said their piece. We made sure that the miscommunication and the lack of communication and the lack of openness that had happened before within the band didn’t happen again. There had been a lot of third parties communicating for us and that’s never good. It’s never good in any communications, because then you’ll end up with a stalemate. Part of the problem back then was that we were younger, and back then, honestly, I was burned out. I didn’t want to hear from anybody, I didn’t want t hear from anything. I was just as burned out and fried as I could possibly be. As was everybody. We didn’t really take care of our business. We let others do it and that was a big mistake. It was a big learning curve in that we realized that no one can take care of your business as well as you can. ●– – Raul Malo on the break-up and reunion of The Mavericks.

As far as session work goes, it continues to separate itself as just what I do when I’m in Nashville. A lot of the records I’m playing on you probably wouldn’t be able to tell if it was me or not. I guess that’s why I love to play live dates where it really matters, at least to me, that it’s me up there playing. I’m putting real specific, artistic energy into something where I don’t necessarily do that as a Nashville session player working on some Top 40 country song. ●– – Prolific session player Bryan Sutton, whose new solo album is Into My Own.

I recorded an album with Merle Haggard which should be out in the next 30-60 days. He called and I figured he wanted me to sing on some of his songs, since he’s written so many good ones. But he wanted me to do 6 of my songs, and he’d do 6 of his. We recorded it all acoustic. ●– – Recently-announced Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Mac Wiseman to Bluegrass Today’s John Lawless. Wiseman and Haggard acoustic album on the way, evidently. Get excited.

I’ve always looked up to her so much because she’s a woman singing the kind of music she wanted to sing and doing it the way she wanted to do it. If it was a bluegrass record, so be it. It was something she was proud of, and she always stood true to that.
She just sang, and there wasn’t a lot of extra to it. She would play her guitar and sing her heart out. And to me, personally, that’s what gets to me when I see somebody doing that — more than choreography or whatever it is that I can’t do. ●– – Ashley Monroe on idolizing Emmylou Harris.

She had a house full of kids, but she always encouraged us to be who we were. She didn’t try to make us be like Daddy or be like her, don’t do this, don’t do that. She allowed us to be who we were and she encouraged that. She just tried to guide us and lead us, but she did not try to change us. I was my own child and my own woman. Mama got it in every one of us—she saw it. ●– – Dolly Parton on her mom’s best quality.

Nashville at the time was ignoring Western music and California country music, so Gene Autry and Buck Owens, among others, formed the A.C.M. to award music Nashville was ignoring. Same thing’s happening today with Nashville turning its back on all the musics that are represented in Ameripolitan. ●– – Ray Benson likens Dale Watson’s burgeoning Ameripolitan movement to the founding of the Academy of Country Music, born of similar musical unrest in the 1960s.

We’ve heard the term ‘bro country’, and I don’t really know what it means. People like to label things I guess these days. What’s country? What’s not country? ●– – Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley again.

Well, I do lean toward party music on some records, but even on Crash My Party I’ve got a song like Drink A Beer that’s quite a deep song. It talks about loss. You can’t have 12 songs about partying on every album. You need an ebb and flow of emotions. […] Look at George Strait — he’s been around for four decades. And if you really want, you can pick out five goofy songs like (George Jones’) Love Bug that you can claim are what he’s all about. But it’s not true. He’s got so many hit songs to choose from. It makes more sense to look at the range of the career. ●– – Luke Bryan quibbles with his reputation as the goofy party song guy, pointing out that George Strait’s six Spring Break albums could seem just as silly if viewed in the right light. Oh, George Strait hasn’t released six Spring Break albums? That’s odd…

Country superstar Brad Paisley is furious with his record label, Sony Music, and has slapped them with a lawsuit claiming they stole more than $10 million from him, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting. ●– – Carrie Underwood (via 19 Entertainment) is currently involved in a lawsuit against Sony too.

I’ve been bitten by fire ants and I share my house with spiders as big as my shoes. Every day the sky does things that makes no sense to me. No matter what I’m doing I’m always aware of being surrounded by this vastness and of living on this land that was once an ocean. On the mountains you can see seashell fossils everywhere. I feel like I’m living in a dream world. ●– – Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family on staying alive to everyday wonders.

You gotta be close. You gotta be friends. You gotta share things. And you got to not be in each other’s face all the time, so don’t think you have to be in each other’s face all the time (laughs). Give it a little space, and give it a little respect. Respect the other person, and make a lot of love. ●– – Dolly Parton on the secret to a successful marriage.

This is country music for people who think country music needs a whoopin’. ●– – Ketch Secor on Old Crow Medicine Show’s next album, Remedy, out July 1. Can’t wait.

I could fire off a retort to Davison, Bryan, or Kelley, but I need to take a break from ranting about country music for a while. I’m passionate about this stuff, but getting all worked up is probably no good for my blood pressure.

So I will just say thank you for compiling these quotations, I enjoyed reading them. Also, I feel the same way as Rennie Sparks about the natural world. This planet is kind of a mystifying place to be.

And re: Bryan’s comment that “(i)t makes more sense to look at the range of the career”:

Whaaaaat? People are looking at the entirety of Bryan’s career when they ridicule him. I mean, sure, George Jones had clunkers like “I’m A People,” “The Ceremony,” and all that rockabilly stuff, the latter of which he himself later disavowed, calling it “a bunch of sh*t.” But it was the vast majority of what was later chosen to be released for radio airplay — “When The Grass Grows Over Me,” “A Good Year For the Roses,” “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes” — that made him so revered. Now, whether George Jones’ rockabilly records were really a bunch of sh*t I couldn’t say, as I haven’t heard any of ’em. But it just goes to show you the lofty standards the man had as an artist. Same goes for George Strait; in fact, if I remember correctly Strait had such a problem with pop-sounding records all by themselves that he parted ways with producer Blake Mevis over the latter’s insistence on Strait taking a more pop direction as they were finding songs for the follow-up to 1982’s Strait from the Heart.

Luke Bryan, on the other hand, more or less sold out right after his first album. I don’t know what he’s bitching and moaning about. One song like “Drink A Beer” doesn’t make up for 5 songs like “That’s My Kind of Night.”

At the bottom of a lot of arguments in favor of “bro-country” is a total disregard, or lack of understanding for the concept of proportionality. Defenders try to cherry-pick individual instances where some traditional country guy did something silly, or diverged from tradition, then use that as an argument in favor of completely jettisoning traditional elements or allowing inane, shallow triviality be the dominant paradigm of the entire genre.

Can someone now shut Brian Kelley back up? The boy shouldn’t have started talking in the first place. What a waste of “good” country music airtime. There is actually a contest on the iHeart Radio stations to have FGL come play in your backyard. WHAT??? WHY???

And speaking of FGL, where does Luke Bryan get off putting his music in the same content as either of the Georges? What a Nimrod…

Luke Bryan thinking that ” Drink A Beer” is a deep song should tell you everything you need to know about his career in country music. At some point Bryan, Aldean, FGL, and their frat will be gone. Just like a bad cold we have to wait them out. We waited out Shania Twain.